Chris Matthews’s disgraceful abuse of Sarah Palin

That’s the question that must be asked of MSNBC host Chris Matthews. The left-wing blowhard and Democratic Party apparatchik is shamelessly and obscenely trying to destroy Sarah Palin’s political future.

I know, I know. This is old news, right? I mean, what else is new?

But we’re now four days removed from the Saturday morning massacre in Tucson! Time and reflection are supposed to make our national dialogue and debate wiser and more enlightened, not stupider and more depraved.

Matthews, moreover, is supposed to be MSNBC’s more cerebral and respectable leftist blowhard. He’s supposed to be different from, and somewhat better than, the other four members of the MSNBC politburo: Ed Schultz, Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O’Donnell and Keith Olbermann.

Only he’s not. Matthews is just as nasty, mean-spirited, vicious and vitriolic as the rest of them. Indeed, here’s what he said last night:

As long as she lives, Sarah Palin will be checkable on Google. You can look up crosshairs and Gabrielle Giffords, and you will get Sarah Palin and the crosshairs.

Check it out: It is never going away unless she deals with it.

And if she doesn’t deal with it, she will always be the candidate who put Giffords in her crosshairs before Giffords was shot. And that is powerful imagery. And she ought to deal with it instead of hiding in a bunker.

Whomever is advising her to hide right now — and you know, she is pretty talkative. Where’s she been now for five days, except she doesn’t know what the hell to say.

And I got something to say: I made a mistake. Fix it. We’ve all made mistakes.

Yeah, Matthews, you’re right about that one. We all make mistakes. I obviously made a big mistake by turning on the television and tuning into your sorry excuse for a show.

Sarah Palin is a dignified woman who will not, and should not, dignify your abuse and bullying with a response. But I’m less dignified and more eager for a fight, so I’ll respond.

How dare you? How dare you suggest that SarahPAC’s flier had anything whatsoever to do with this nut’s senseless and horrific act of violence?

How dare you suggest that a political map, which “targeted” 20 House Democrats for defeat, is in any way linked to the Tucson massacre? How dare you suggest that placing these Democrat districts in the crosshairs on a political map helped to precipitate Saturday’s murderous rage?

Where I come from, savagely and groundlessly attacking a woman in the way that you have, and impugning her honor, are grounds for a fight. As David Brooks explained in yesterday’s New York Times, these are “vicious charges made by people [such as yourself] who claim to be criticizing viciousness.”

There is nothing, nothing at all, wrong with martial language in the context of politics. Anybody with a lick of sense understands that the language is metaphorical. And almost anybody in the mental condition of… Loughner needs no martial language from politicians to set him off.

In fact, as Charles Krauthammer points out in today’s Washington Post: “There is no evidence that [murder suspect Jared] Loughner was impelled to violence by…anything, political or otherwise, outside of his own head.”

But to paraphrase Krauthammer in a slightly different context, the origins of Loughner’s delusions are clear: mental illness. So, too, the origins of Matthews’s vicious smears: not mental illness, but political malice.

John R. Guardiano is a writer and analyst in Arlington, Virginia. He writes and blogs for a variety of publications, including FrumForum, the American Spectator and The Daily Caller. Follow him at hispersonal blog,ResoluteCon.com, and onTwitter@JohnRGuardiano.